From "America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (
Boston Book Review) comes the definitive account of Ed Gein, a mild-mannered Wisconsin farmhand who stunned an unsuspecting nation - and redefined the meaning of the word
psycho.

When 14-year-old Jesse Pomeroy was arrested in 1874, a nightmarish reign of terror over an unsuspecting city came to an end. "The Boston Boy Fiend" was imprisoned at last. But the complex questions sparked by his ghastly crime spree - the hows and whys of vicious juvenile crime - were as relevant in the so-called Age of Innocence as they are today.

In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard.

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The Serial Killer Files

The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Murderers

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Charles Constant

Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
539

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
480

Story

4 out of 5 stars
478

Hollywood's make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can't hold a candle to real-life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of
Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon.

In the winter of 1873, a small band of prospectors lost their way in the frozen wilderness of the Colorado Rockies. Months later, when the snow finally melted, only one of them emerged. His name was Alfred G. Packer, though he would soon become infamous throughout the country under a different name: "the Man-Eater."

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The Pied Piper

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Steven Weber

Length: 1 hr and 5 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
363

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
314

Story

4 out of 5 stars
312

With makeup and an affected Elvis pout, Tucson’s Charlie Schmid was a crude parody of a bad-boy heartthrob. In 1964, he still had a hold on girls who’d follow him anywhere. He murdered three of them. It was the dawn of the free-love movement - perfect for a magnetic madman who’d also foreshadow its end a few years later in the malignant charisma of Charles Manson. The inspiration for a classic story by Joyce Carol Oates, Schmid, the most bizarre serial killer of any era, was the epitome of a narcissist flattered into believing he could get away with murder.

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Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Steven Weber

Length: 1 hr and 19 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
600

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
504

Story

4 out of 5 stars
504

At a remote little inn not far from the Kansas homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder lived the Bender family. These pioneers welcomed unwary visitors with jackrabbit stew and a sledgehammer to the skull. In time, their apple orchard gave up its secrets - a burial ground for their mutilated victims, each stripped of their possessions. The devilish enterprise on “Hell’s Half-Acre” would earn the Bloody Benders an undying place in the annals of American infamy. But it was the mysterious fate of eldest daughter, Kate, that would make them the stuff of mythic campfire prairie tales.

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The Pirate

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Steven Weber

Length: 1 hr and 28 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
437

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
384

Story

4 out of 5 stars
382

In 1860, a sloop drifted into New York Harbor. Not a soul on board - just blood from cabin to deck. Looted coins led to Bowery thug Albert Hicks, the ax slayer who turned his shipmates into chum. His crimes were absolutely fiendish. His execution was pure ballyhoo. It drew nearly ten thousand bloodthirsty sightseers to the city - including the enterprising showman P. T. Barnum. Refreshments were served as the most notorious and unrepentant mass murderer of the era made history as one of America’s first celebrity killers.

In the horrifying annals of American crime, the infamous names of brutal killers such as Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, and Berkowitz are writ large in the imaginations of a public both horrified and hypnotized by their monstrous, murderous acts. But for every celebrity psychopath who's gotten ink for spilling blood, there's a bevy of all-but-forgotten homicidal fiends studding the bloody margins of US history.

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The Brick Slayer

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Steven Weber

Length: 58 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
316

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
281

Story

4 out of 5 stars
280

A series of brutal home invasions terrified Los Angeles in 1937. They ended in Chicago a year later with the arrest of African American teenager Robert Nixon, igniting racial tensions in an already appallingly divided city. Tortured in custody and portrayed by the press in the most lurid and flagrantly racist terms, Nixon faced an all-white jury. It would be the fastest conviction in the history of Cook County. The case against Nixon is a still-relevant examination of bigotry, suppressed rage, and the making of a murderer.

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The Devil's Gentleman

Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Sean Runnette

Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
113

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
106

Story

4 out of 5 stars
104

The wayward son of a revered Civil War general, Roland Molineux enjoyed good looks, status, and fortune - hardly the qualities of a prime suspect in a series of shocking, merciless cyanide killings. Molineux's subsequent indictment for murder led to two explosive trials and a sex-infused scandal that shocked the nation. Bringing to life Manhattan's Gilded Age, Schechter captures all the colors of the tumultuous legal proceedings.

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Rampage

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Steven Weber

Length: 1 hr and 23 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
298

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
269

Story

4 out of 5 stars
268

In 1949, things like this just didn’t happen: A quiet New Jersey resident took a morning walk with a 9 mm Luger pistol. In twelve minutes he murdered thirteen neighbors...and then went back to bed. Howard Unruh went from obscurity to infamy overnight. Even after his obsessive diaries were discovered - a catalogue of simmering rage, petty grievances, and sexual repression - the anomalous crime seemed incomprehensible. Succeeding decades would confirm that Unruh’s “Walk of Death” was just the beginning. The prototype for the modern mass murderer, he would usher in a new age of violence in America.

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Panic

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Steven Weber

Length: 1 hr and 36 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
309

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
271

Story

4 out of 5 stars
272

During the Depression, economic anxieties found an outlet in a series of child murders that triggered an irrational nationwide hysteria: pedophiliac psychopaths were overrunning the country. As America was brought to rage and fury by the press and the FBI, lynch mobs took to the streets, reason gave way to doomsday scenarios, and one father was even driven to murder his three daughters to “save them” from a degenerate crime wave. A terrifying cautionary essay, Panic explores the combustible mix of unfounded fears, moral crusades, and the dangers of collective thinking.

Beekman Place, once one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan, had a curious way of making it into the tabloids in the 1930s: SKYSCRAPER SLAYER, BEAUTY SLAIN IN BATHTUB read the headlines. On Easter Sunday in 1937, the discovery of a grisly triple homicide at Beekman Place would rock the neighborhood yet again - and enthrall the nation. The young man who committed these murders would come to be known in the annals of American crime as the Mad Sculptor.

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The Whole Death Catalog

A Lively Guide to the Bitter End

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
Patrick Lawlor

Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins

Unabridged

Overall

0 out of 5 stars
0

Performance

0 out of 5 stars
0

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0 out of 5 stars
0

In the tradition of Mary Roach's best-selling Stiff and Jessica Mitford's classic expose The American Way of Death comes this meticulously researched and refreshingly irreverent look at death from acclaimed author Harold Schechter. With his trademark fearlessness and bracing sense of humor, Schechter digs deep into a wealth of sources to unearth a treasure trove of surprising facts, amusing anecdotes, practical information, and timeless wisdom about that undiscovered country to which we will all one day travel.

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Beauty Slain in Bath: The Titterton Tragedy of 1936

By:
Harold Schechter

Narrated by:
James Edward Thomas

Length: 48 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
6

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
5

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
5

A story from the anthology
Masters of True Crime, which spans murder cases from the beginning of the 20th century to today. This is a must-hear for fans of true crime and will also be compelling to mystery and thriller listeners.